


Midnight's Nocturne

by KitsJay



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, creepiness, grimm kinkmeme, violence against a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 06:38:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KitsJay/pseuds/KitsJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the prompt: Nick is having a really rough time with all things Grimm -- maybe he tangled with something particularly nasty, maybe he's having nightmares, maybe he split with Juliette because of his new calling, or maybe it's just a been a bad week -- but he's freaked, stressed, and down. Listening to Monroe play helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight's Nocturne

**Author's Note:**

> The song I was listening to can be found [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwxLHqBDVNs&feature=related). I highly recommend it.

Nick had noticed it, in that idle way a detective has of noting every exit, every weapon, every piece of minutiae littered on the desks like liquid ink notes leaking across a page of sheet music. It had never really clicked until he thought about it. Monroe always had the remnants of hobbies sprinkled around: a half-finished wood carving on the mantle waiting to be picked up and worked on again, the exercise machine tucked unobtrusively into a corner of the room, a riffled deck of playing cards, all the knick-knacks that were around to distract Monroe from the gnawing addiction fighting against his will power every damn day. It was like an ex-smoker with their omnipresent packs of gum and lollipops and carrot sticks, except there wasn’t a nicotine patch for blood thirst.

The hobby of Monroe’s that he loved best, though, the one that he kept to himself because it felt like a secret shared between lovers, was the dark gleaming wood of the cello when Monroe would pull it out. The way he handled the instrument so carefully, long fingers wrapped around the neck, the almost reverent caresses as he put it away--Nick could hear him, sometimes, through the door. He would wait for a few minutes, just listening to the faint strands as they floated out to him on the porch, before Monroe would smell him and open the door and put the cello away again.

He wanted to hear a serenade, but he tucked it away, because that was another secret, and not one to be shared.

But none of that was here nor there--because the only sounds in the alleyway was the faint screaming of a colicy baby crying somewhere far above in the rickety apartment building, the distant, staticy voice of a radio being played too loud, and the rustling of black wings from the Nachtkrapp as it dove at him.

He thumbed the safety off his gun.

“Don’t do this,” he said, a thin note of pleading in his voice. The creature’s wings were too dark to make out from the shadows adorning the alley wall. “Please.”

The Nachtkrapp was silent and unmoving for a moment, and he almost let out a sigh of relief when it suddenly let out a cacophonous caw and swooped toward the apartment where the baby was still letting out its shrill cries.

He pulled the trigger, the crescendo of the work he played nearly every night now.

The bird landed with a dull thud on the ground.

It wasn’t the first creature he had killed, not by far, but staring at its corpse he was struck by the composition of blood and black: wings sprawled garishly and smears on the concrete like a snow angel. It felt like the first. And the second. And the third. And never the last.

Three children, one only eighteen months, all disappeared from their cribs, taken from distraught parents who cried on his shoulder or stood stoically by their wife’s side, their faces blank and empty and frustratingly void. He had to stare three mothers in the eye and lie to their faces, telling them they would do their best when he knew what had taken them, abducted them from their beds and tore them apart and pulled out their heart to feed its gullet.

He started his car, eager to leave before the cops--his _colleagues_ \--arrived to investigate the gunshot. 

In a fugue, he drove, surprised to find that he was in front of Monroe’s house. The inside was lit, a warm glow in the windows. He waited a moment, then left his car and stood on the porch. The soles of his shoes stuck to the resin covered wood beneath his feet. If he leaned his forehead against the door frame, he could hear the faint strains of a sad cello melody playing from inside. Nick closed his eyes and let it wash over him.

He barely noticed when it paused and the door opened.

“Do you have any idea what--” whatever Monroe was going to say died on his lips, and Nick wondered what he looked like. His eyes were probably too wide and too blue, stark in his face, his skin too pale and ashen under the porch light and half hidden in the dark’s cloak.

“Could you,” his voice was raw, too, “Could you play something for me?”

Monroe nodded slowly, opening the door wider and ushering him in, carefully only touching his elbow, or the small of his back. He guided Nick to a plush chair opposite from where his cello was leaning.

“What do you want to hear?”

“Anything,” Nick said. His voice jumped like a too-taut chord. “Just play something. Please.”

Monroe put his bow against the strings and drew out a high, tremulous note, letting it hang in the air and pulling another deeper one to join it, drawing out a sweet symphony. Nick tilted his head back and listened to the music, caught in its rhapsody. He didn’t know what it was called, he was never much of a music fan, anyway, but it sounded beautiful and perfectly wonderful and didn’t at all remind him of the soft flutter of wings and those empty, dead eyes of parents who would never sing their children a lullaby again.


End file.
